ENTALADA | 2018
The presentation of Entalada (stuck) by Sandra Baía at Travessa da Ermida brought up some memories of other artworks.
In Lisbon, the Entalados (the stuck ones), was the expression used by Keil to name the figurative artworks made for the yield buildings, predominantly in Avenidas Novas de Lisboa. These artworks were literally, and by and large, placed between the buildings’ entry doors upper part and other architectonic façade elements such as windows or balconies on the first floor, creating a visual effect of tension or squeeze. At that time many of these artworks were women representations and remained commonly known as As entaladas (the stuck ones), origin and inspiration for this installation.
In 1961, Christo and Jean Claude presented Wall of Barrels – The Iron Curtain, Rue Visconti in Paris. This artwork consists of eighty-nine petroleum barrels piled in a narrow street, for only eight hours, in order to block the street’s circulation. It was thought in the context of the construction of Berlin’s wall in 1961 and the protests and barricades in reaction to Algeria’s war. This feeling of tension, given by something compressed or forced in-between two already existing structures appears in Sandra Baía’s installation, a 5 meters’ diameter mirrored sphere thought specifically to be placed in-between the exterior façades of two buildings in the narrow Travessa da Ermida, allowing the circulation below the piece.
Passing by below the artwork the visitors interact with the mirrored sphere the same way one can interact with Michelangelo Pistoletto’s (1933) artworks, making part of it, creating stories, but with a difference: a 360º spherical reflex. Everything around it will be reflexed, including the observer, what takes us to the artwork from 1434 The Arnolfini Couple by Jan Van Eyck, in which it can be found a mirror representation with a circle shape generating images and distorted reflexes of the couple’s room and the objects in it. It is a game of images intensified through distortions and field depth raising the observer’s curiosity at the same time.
Tensions and reflexes have been subject of investigation in Sandra Baía’s work throughout time: the tension created by a slight imbalance in structures that are apparently stable or balanced and reflexes by the usage of mirrored material.
In the artwork Entalada (stuck), by the artist’s subtle action, the observer’s presence and by the space where it is integrated, a perfect sphere sees its structural perfection being changed.
Lourenço Igreja